Missing You
by rittenden
Summary: Oneshot. Mother's Day fic. Thanks to 3rdgal for the beta.


**Missing You**

Charlie leaned down and placed the small bouquet of flowers against the cool granite. "Happy Mother's Day, Mom," he whispered brokenly. "I miss you." As he stood a wide, warm hand came down on his shoulder gently and he looked up into the kind eyes of his older brother. He shrugged sheepishly and ducked his head, hiding the flush in his cheeks from his brother's gaze.

"Don't be embarrassed, Charlie," Don said softly. He held up a fragrant bundle of lavender. "I had the same idea." He stooped down, placing the bunch on the headstone before straightening up. He trailed the fingers of his other hand over the edge of the stone, his eyes fastened on the engraved letters. _Margaret Eppes, Beloved Wife and Mother._ "She was," he went on in a quiet tone. "Beloved, I mean."

Nodding, Charlie agreed, "She still is."

"I miss her too, you know."

"I know." Charlie chanced a glance at his brother from underneath a cascade of dark curls. "Sometimes…" he began, then halted.

Don looked at him sharply. "Sometimes?" he prompted.

Sighing, Charlie replied, "It doesn't matter. Regardless of what people like Larry think, you can't change the past."

Silence descended between the two men. Finally Don said, "Sometimes you wish you'd been there? At the end, I mean?" Charlie didn't respond. Don glanced over to see his brother blinking furiously. "Hey, Charlie," he went on, his tone soothing. "It's alright, you know. She understood."

"That doesn't mean it was right," Charlie whispered. "I should have been there."

Don slid his hand across his brother's shoulders and enveloped him in a quick, one-armed hug. "It's okay, buddy," he repeated. "It was a long time ago. As someone once told me… 'Get over yourself'."

Charlie looked up. "Yeah, about that…" he began.

"Don't apologize," Don interrupted. "You were right."

"I could have put it better."

His brother nodded slowly. "You could," he agreed. "I don't know if it would've had the same impact, though."

Staring at the gravestone, Charlie's expression sobered. "I still miss her," he said. "It's been years, but it still hurts, you know?" At the older man's slow nod, he added, "Sometimes I can still smell her perfume – or I think I can see her, out of the corner of my eye." He paused. "It kind of freaks me out." Don didn't reply, instead watching his brother carefully, his arm still slung around Charlie's shoulders. Taking a steadying breath, Charlie asked, "Did she really, Don? Did she really understand?"

Don lifted his gaze from his brother's face, staring off into the distance. He thought back to when his mother – their mother – was still alive. Still clinging bravely to life in a dispassionate hospital five minutes from the home she'd created for them.

_Don pretended to read the magazine he'd brought with him from one of the nearby waiting rooms as his parents spoke quietly. In truth, he was stealing glances at his mother, propped up against a mound of pillows, her hair carefully arranged and her makeup in place. She smiled at something his father said and Don almost fancied he saw the old Margaret Eppes twinkling in those pain-clouded eyes. That she was in pain, he had no doubt. Years of training and experience allowed him to recognize the signs immediately. The slightly pinched look around the eyes; the drawn-down corners of her mouth – even when she was smiling; the vein that stood out on her forehead whenever she was under stress. For a moment, he was tempted to speak up – to tell her to push the button on the PCA pump that administered her pain medication – but he remained silent. He knew why she didn't. The medicine made her drowsy and she didn't want to sleep while they were there. He suspected as well that she was waiting. Waiting for him to come see her. Even though they all knew he wouldn't._

_Fixing his gaze deliberately on the dog-eared pages in front of him, Don fought down another wave of anger as he thought of his brother, holed up in the garage at home working on an unsolvable math problem. The last thing any of them expected when Margaret's illness was determined to be incurable was for Charlie to lock himself away from them all. Not physically – they could enter his sanctuary at will – but emotionally. Professor Charles Eppes was totally unreachable, sequestered in a small niche in his brilliant mind with only his safe, healthy numbers for company. Both Don and their father had tried to get through to the young genius, Alan with frequent visits and offers of food and Don with barely-controlled rage. Charlie either didn't notice them or he wanted them to think he didn't. Either way, he got his wish. Both Don and Alan eventually left him alone._

_His mother said it was alright – that she knew what Charlie was doing and why – but Don didn't agree. He saw the look she quickly masked whenever they came to visit. A bright, welcoming smile for both him and his father and then a quick flick of the eyes to the closing door. No matter what she said, Margaret still harbored a tiny seed of hope that one day Charlie would come too. Every time he saw that glance – saw her smile falter slightly – he felt like turning on his heel and heading back to the house to drag Charlie, kicking and screaming if necessary, to their mother's bedside. Instead he would smile back, planting a kiss on her cheek as he pulled up a chair and asked how she was doing. The answer was always the same – "Oh, you know… I've been better" – before she asked how his day went._

_He didn't think his father was fooled, either, but Alan never said anything – to him or Charlie. He would sit in the chair beside her and tell her all about the gardening he'd done and how well the flowers she loved were doing. It was all a lie, really. Since she was admitted to hospital, Alan hadn't touched his wife's prized blooms. He couldn't bear to. Don had tried to tend to them, but he didn't have the green thumb his mother had. At least the plants were still alive. Maybe they would stay that way until someone came to rescue them._

_It was a double-edged sword, Charlie not coming to visit. On the one hand, Don felt that that was what was keeping their mother alive – the hope that if she just hung on long enough, he would come. On the other, he felt it was just prolonging her torment. He figured that if Charlie would come see her once – or definitively say he wouldn't – that Margaret would finally let go. As much as Don didn't want her to die, he also didn't want her to suffer any more._

_One day, not too long before the end, Don found himself alone in the room with her. His father had ducked out to get a cup of coffee, leaving the two alone together for the first time in weeks. Don had been sitting beside her on the bed – something she asked him to do more often now – telling her about his work in Albuquerque, when he saw her glance at the door. His speech faltered slightly as he followed her gaze and he lost his train of thought. Don looked down at his hands, folded ineffectually in his lap, and his lips tightened into a grim line._

_Margaret placed her thin hand on his knee. When he looked up, she whispered, "Don't judge."_

_Don could only shake his head. He knew if he tried to respond, he'd only upset her, so he chose to remain silent. She had enough to worry about without trying to make him feel better about his conspicuously-absent brother. _

"_He's doing the best he can," she added, still in that breathy voice he'd come to despise. It was so unlike his mother, the thin puff of words she used now, that he sometimes felt as though the Margaret Eppes he knew and loved was already gone, leaving a shadow in her stead. _

_Deciding his best defense was ignorance, Don asked, "Who? Dad?"_

_A delicate frown furrowed her brow and she gave him a reproving look. "Stop it, Don," she replied. "You know who I'm talking about."_

"_Charlie." Don spat the name as though it were sour on his tongue. _

"_Yes," Margaret sighed. "Your brother." Don snorted derisively. "No matter what comes next, Don," she chided gently. "He'll always be your brother."_

_Don's shoulders slumped. "I'm sorry," he said, genuinely contrite. "I didn't want to upset you."_

"_Don't be ridiculous," she retorted without heat. "I napped all morning so we could have this talk." Don looked up sharply and she smiled. "You actually thought your father had changed his mind about hospital coffee?"_

_Smiling wryly, he replied, "Co-conspirators, huh?"_

"_We always were."_

_He sighed. "He should be here," he said, giving up all pretense. "It's not right."_

_Margaret patted his knee. "Maybe not for you or your father – or even me," she replied. "But maybe it is for him."_

"_Tell me how it could possibly be right for him, Mom," Don snapped. "Because I'm not seeing it."_

"_Your brother has always been different," she answered. "We all know that. And because he's different, he deals with things in ways that we don't always understand." She paused to catch her breath. "If he could be here," his mother went on. "He would be. Charlie's not being deliberately hurtful."_

_Don shook his head in amazement. "Even now," he murmured. "You're still making excuses for him."_

_Turning her hand over, she said, "Donny, listen to me." He covered her hand with his own, wincing inwardly at how frail it felt. "Darling, I'm not making excuses. I'm offering an explanation. No one truly knows what's going on in Charlie's head except Charlie."_

"_You always seemed to."_

"_I could make a guess," she replied with a small lift of her shoulder. "But that doesn't mean I was always right. Close, maybe, but not absolutely right."_

_Running his thumb over her thin fingers where they curled around the edge of his palm, Don said thoughtfully, "So you think it's okay that he doesn't come to see you?" When she didn't reply immediately, he glanced up, startled by the resigned look on her face. "Mom?"_

"_You come to see me," she said at last. "And your father."_

"_It's not the same thing, though."_

"_No," she agreed. "But I know Charlie loves me. Maybe he loves me too much to be here."_

_Don frowned. "That doesn't make any sense. If he loves you that much, then he would be here."_

"_There's all kinds of love, my son," Margaret replied gently. "Your father's is open and steadfast, a harbor against all storms. Yours is buried deep inside, where no one can use it against you unless you let them."_

"_And Charlie?"_

_She sighed. "Charlie's is complex. He loves too much – too hard – so when something hurts him, it's…" She paused briefly and something flashed in her eyes. "It hurts everything he is."_

_Don thought for a moment. "So this is his way of protecting himself?" he asked. When she nodded, he said, "Seems pretty selfish to me."_

"_It's not. It's more like self-defense."_

"_Right." Don's expression darkened. "Still sounds selfish."_

_Margaret shook her head. "I don't expect you to understand, Don," she said. "Just… be understanding."_

_The door opened at that moment and Alan poked his head inside, effectively ending the conversation. Thinking back on it later, Don recognized the look on his mother's face as one of resignation – she'd finally admitted to herself that her youngest son would not come to see her before she died. The tiny spark of hope had been extinguished at last. From that moment onward, Margaret stopped looking expectantly at the door for a third visitor whenever they came to see her. To Don, that seemed to be the pivotal moment when her health truly began to fail. Up to that point, his mother had kept up the appearance of having a handle on her illness. Since their conversation she'd abandoned the charade and she passed away not long after. _

_Don thought many times that if he hadn't brought it up, she might have stayed even longer. That by talking about it and making her realize the truth, he'd taken away his mother's will to live. It gave him not a few sleepless nights until he sat down and had a stern talk with his conscience. He wasn't to blame for her death any more than Charlie was, no matter how much he'd resented his brother's absence. In a way, he'd been silently accusing the younger man of making their mother even more ill, when deep down he knew it wasn't true. At last he told the little voice on his shoulder that if she could forgive Charlie his idiosyncrasies, he could do no less. __**I don't have to understand him**__, he thought firmly. __**I just have to be understanding.**_

Suddenly realizing Charlie was still waiting for an answer, Don looked at him and smiled. "Yeah, buddy," he replied at last. "Mom was the most understanding person we know, right?" Charlie nodded once. "We talked about it, you know – about you not being there."

"You did?"

Don used the arm on Charlie's shoulder to steer him toward the car. "We did," he agreed. "She explained it to me. I didn't really get it at the time, but… I do now."

Charlie looked up at him hopefully. "So," he began. "You're not still mad about it?"

"Nope. Like you said – it's all in the past now, and we can't change it, no matter how much we'd like to." He gave Charlie a quick squeeze before dropping his arm. "It was a learning experience, Professor. You know about those, don't you?"

A smile quirked the corner of Charlie's lips. "Yeah, I think I do," he replied, opening the car door. "Thanks, Don," he added before climbing inside.

Don looked up at the cloudless sky. "Thanks, Mom," he whispered. "Happy Mother's day."


End file.
